Susan Fiske

Stephen Colbert’s assertion notwithstanding, none of us is color blind. Not even the blind, it turns out. That’s according to the work of Osagie Obasogie, law professor at UC Hastings who earned his doctorate in sociology from UC Berkeley. In 2005, he began interviewing more than a hundred people who had been blind since birth, asking how they understood race. Were they conscious of it? Did it shape how they interacted with people? Could blind people, in fact, be racist?

CALIFORNIA Classic

Exactly one year ago, famed scientist and cultural icon, Stephen Hawking died in his Cambridge home at age 76. Remembered for his contributions to the field of theoretical physics, he shares his date of death with Pi Day––an annual celebration of the beloved mathematical constant and, of course, pie. And what better way to celebrate than with some wisdom from the great physicist himself? As Hawking told his audience during one of many well-attended guest lectures at UC Berkeley,

“Although science may solve the problem of how the Universe began, it can not answer the question: Why does the Universe bother to exist?”